The Institute’s training programs provide continuing education that saves both crew and passenger lives and meets the challenges faced in the new millennium of maritime security. SCI staff works with experts from various fields preparing curricula and designing simulator exercises.

SCI’s computer simulators rank top in the world. They challenge mariners’ reactions and skills with highly dynamic exercises, interactive and unique to each mariner’s judgment and decision-making. SCI has more than 20 years of multi-bridge interactive simulation experience.

SCI’s Center for Maritime Education opened in Houston in 2001. Each year, SCI trains more than 600 mariners at this location. Connecting the Gulf of Mexico to Houston, Houston’s shipping channel sees almost 5,000 ships and 40,000 barges pass through annually, and Houston is home to the largest petrochemical complex in the nation. Training in the Port of Houston mirrors the diversity of the Port with instruction for both deep-sea and intra-coastal mariners.

Opened in 1997, the Center for Maritime Education in Paducah, KY trains over 1,000 mariners each year. Situated at the confluence of the Ohio and Tennessee Rivers, the Center occupies part of a historic water-front building. The insides of that building, however, contain some of the world’s most sophisticated computer equipment for training mariners.

Outside of the town’s center sits SCI’s second Paducah, KY campus. The fire field, part of SCI’s Maritime Fire Fighting Program, surrounds a fire fighting simulator constructed using the top portion of a towboat. SCI administers the only specifically designed program to teach crucial firefighting skills to mariners who work on the inland rivers.